Part 2

Of this animal almost the entire skull has been discovered, but not sufficient of the rest of the skeleton to guide to a complete restoration of the animal. The head only, therefore, is shown, of the natural size, at the left extremity of the Secondary Island.

The first or generic name of this animal is derived from the locality, Maestricht, on the river Meuse (Lat. Mosa), in Germany, where its remains have been chiefly discovered, and from the Greek word sauros, a lizard, to which tribe of animals it belongs. Its second name refers to its discoverer, Dr. Hoffmann, of Maestricht, surgeon to the forces quartered in that town in 1780. This gentleman had occupied his leisure by the collection of the fossils from the quarries which were then worked to a great extent at Maestricht for a kind of yellowish stone of a chalky nature, and belonging to the most recent of the secondary class of formations in geology. In one of the great subterraneous quarries or galleries, about five hundred paces from the entrance, and ninety feet below the surface, the quarrymen exposed part of the skull of the Mosasaurus, in a block of stone which they were engaged in detaching. On this discovery they suspended their work, and went to inform Dr. Hoffmann, who, on arriving at the spot, directed the operations of the men, so that they worked out the block without injury to the fossil; and the doctor then, with his own hands, cleared away the matrix and exposed the jaws and teeth, casts of which are shown in the cretaceous rock of the Island.

This fine specimen, which Hoffmann had added with so much pains and care to his collection, soon, however, became a source of chagrin to him. One of the canons of the cathedral at Maestricht, who owned the surface of the soil beneath which was the quarry whence the fossil had been obtained, when the fame of the specimen reached him, pleaded certain feudal rights to it. Hoffmann resisted, and the canon went to law. The Chapter supported the canon, and the decree ultimately went against the poor surgeon, who lost both his specimen and his money—being made to pay the costs of the action. The canon did not, however, long enjoy possession of the unique specimen. When the French army bombarded Maestricht in 1795, directions were given to spare the suburb in which the famous fossil was known to be preserved; and after the capitulation of the town it was seized and borne off in triumph. The specimen has since remained in the museum of the Garden of Plants at Paris.

This skull of the Mosasaurus measures four and a half feet long and two and a half feet wide. The large pointed teeth on the jaws are very conspicuous; but, in addition to these, the gigantic reptile had teeth on a bone of the roof of the mouth (the pterygoid), like some of the modern lizards. The entire length of the animal has been estimated at about thirty feet. It is conjectured to have been able to swim well, and to have frequented the sea in quest of prey: its dentition shows its predatory and carnivorous character, and its remains have hitherto been met with exclusively in the chalk formations. Besides the specimens from St. Peter’s Mount, Maestricht, of which the above-described skull is the most remarkable, fossil bones and teeth of the Mosasaurus have been found in the chalk of Kent, and in the green-sand—a member of the cretaceous series—in New Jersey, United States of America. No animal like the Mosasaurus is now known to exist.

Nos. 2 & 3.—The Pterodactyle.

Nos. 2 and 3 are restorations of a flying reptile or dragon, called Pterodactyle, from the Greek words pteron, a wing, and dactylos, a finger; because the wings are mainly supported by the outer finger, enormously lengthened and of proportionate strength, which, nevertheless, answers to the little finger of the human hand. The wings consisted of folds of skin, like the leather wings of the bat; and the Pterodactyles were covered with scales, not with feathers: the head, though somewhat resembling in shape that of a bird, and supported on a long and slender neck, was provided with long jaws, armed with teeth; and altogether the structure of these extinct members of the reptilian class is such as to rank them amongst the most extraordinary of all the creatures yet discovered in the ruins of the ancient earth.

Remains of the Pterodactyle were first discovered, in 1784, by Prof. Collini, in the lithographic slate of Aichstadt, in Germany, which slate is a member of the oolitic formations: the species so discovered was at first mistaken for a bird, and afterwards supposed to be a large kind of bat, but had its true reptilian nature demonstrated by Baron Cuvier, by whom it was called the Pterodactylus longirostris, or Long-beaked Pterodactyle: it was about the size of a curlew.

A somewhat larger species—the Pterodactylus macronyx, or Long-clawed Pterodactyle—was subsequently discovered by the Rev. Dr. Buckland, in the lias formation of Lyme Regis: its wings, when expanded, must have been about four feet from tip to tip. The smallest known species—the Pterodactylus brevirostris, or Short-beaked Pterodactyle—was discovered in the lithographic slate at Solenhofen, Germany, and has been described by Professor Soemmering.

Remains of the largest known kinds of Pterodactyle have been discovered more recently in chalk-pits, at Burham, in Kent. The skull of one of these species—the Pterodactylus Cuvieri—was about twenty inches in length, and the animal was upborne on an expanse of wing of probably not less than eighteen feet from tip to tip. The restored specimen of this species is numbered 3.

A second very large kind of Pterodactyle—the Pterodactylus compressirostris, or Thin-beaked Pterodactyle—had a head from fourteen to sixteen inches in length, and an expanse of wing, from tip to tip, of fifteen feet. The remains of this species have also been found in the chalk of Kent. From the same formation and locality a third large kind of Pterodactyle, although inferior in size to the two foregoing, has been discovered, called the Pterodactylus conirostris, and also—until the foregoing larger kinds were discovered—Pterodactylus giganteus. The long, sharp, conical teeth in the jaws of the Pterodactyles indicate them to have preyed upon other living animals; their eyes were large, as if to enable them to fly by night. From their wings projected fingers, terminated by long curved claws, and forming a powerful paw, wherewith the animal was enabled to creep and climb, or suspend itself from trees. It is probable, also, that the Pterodactyles had the power of swimming; some kinds, e.g., the Pterodactylus Gemmingi, had a long and stiff tail. “Thus,” writes Dr. Buckland, “like Milton’s Fiend, all qualified for all services and all elements, the creature was a fit companion for the kindred reptiles that swarmed in the seas, or crawled on the shores of a turbulent planet.

‘The Fiend, O’er bog, or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies.’ Paradise Lost, Book II.”

THE WEALDEN.

The Wealden is a mass of petrified clay, sand, and sandstone, deposited from the fresh or brackish water of probably some great estuary, and extending over parts of the counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. This fresh-water formation derives its name from the “Weald” or “Wold” of Kent, where it was first geologically studied, and where it is exposed by the removal of the chalk, which covers or overlies it, in other parts of the South of England.

The Wealden is divided into three groups of strata, which succeed each other in the following descending order:—

1st. Weald Clay, sometimes including thin beds of sand and shelly limestone, forming beds of from 140 to 280 feet in depth or vertical thickness.

2nd. Hastings Sand, in which occur some clays and calcareous grits, forming beds of from 400 to 500 feet in depth.

3rd. Purbeck Beds, so called from being exposed chiefly in the Isle of Purbeck, off the coast of Dorsetshire, where it forms the quarries of the limestone for which Purbeck is famous: the beds of limestones and marls are from 150 to 200 feet in depth.

Nos. 4 & 5.—The Iguanodon. (Iguanodon Mantelli, Conybeare.)

One afternoon, in the spring of 1822, an accomplished lady, the wife of a medical practitioner, at Lewes, in Sussex, walking along the picturesque paths of Tilgate Forest, discovered some objects in the coarse conglomerate rock of the quarries of that locality, which, from their peculiar form and substance, she thought would be interesting to her husband, whose attention had been directed, during his professional drives, to the geology and fossils of his neighbourhood.

The lady was Mrs. Mantell: her husband, the subsequently distinguished geologist, Dr. Mantell, perceived that the fossils discovered by his wife were teeth, and teeth of a large and unknown animal.

“As these teeth,” writes the doctor, “were distinct from any that had previously come under my notice, I felt anxious to submit them to the examination of persons whose knowledge and means of observation were more extensive than my own. I therefore transmitted specimens to some of the most eminent naturalists in this country and on the continent. But although my communications were acknowledged with that candour and liberality which constantly characterise the intercourse of scientific men, yet no light was thrown upon the subject, except by the illustrious Baron Cuvier, whose opinions will best appear by the following extract from the correspondence with which he honoured me:—

“‘These teeth are certainly unknown to me; they are not from a carnivorous animal, and yet I believe that they belong, from their slight degree of complexity, the notching of their margins, and the thin coat of enamel that covers them, to the order of reptiles.

“‘May we not here have a new animal!—a herbivorous reptile? And, just as at the present time with regard to mammals (land-quadrupeds with warm blood), it is amongst the herbivorous that we find the largest species, so also with the reptiles at the remote period when they were the sole terrestrial animals, might not the largest amongst them have been nourished by vegetables?

“‘Some of the great bones which you possess may belong to this animal, which, up to the present time, is unique in its kind. Time will confirm or confute this idea, since it is impossible but that one day a part of the skeleton, united to portions of jaws with the teeth, will be discovered.’”

“These remarks,” Dr. Mantell proceeds to say, “induced me to pursue my investigations with increased assiduity, but hitherto they have not been attended with the desired success, no connected portion of the skeleton having been discovered. Among the specimens lately connected, some, however, were so perfect, that I resolved to avail myself of the obliging offer of Mr. Clift (to whose kindness and liberality I hold myself particularly indebted), to assist me in comparing the fossil teeth with those of the recent Lacertæ in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. The result of this examination proved highly satisfactory, for in an Iguana which Mr. Stutchbury had prepared to present to the College, we discovered teeth possessing the form and structure of the fossil specimens.” (Phil. Trans., 1825, p. 180.) And he afterwards adds:—“The name Iguanodon, derived from the form of the teeth, (and which I have adopted at the suggestion of the Rev. W. Conybeare,) will not, it is presumed, be deemed objectionable.” (Ib. p. 184.)

The further discovery which Baron Cuvier’s prophetic glance saw buried in the womb of time, and the birth of which verified his conjecture that some of the great bones collected by Dr. Mantell belonged to the same animal as the teeth, was made by Mr. W. H. Bensted, of Maidstone, the proprietor of a stone-quarry of the Shanklin-sand formation, in the close vicinity of that town. This gentleman had his attention one day, in May, 1834, called by his workmen to what they supposed to be petrified wood in some pieces of stone which they had been blasting. He perceived that what they supposed to be wood was fossil bone, and with a zeal and care which have always characterised his endeavours to secure for science any evidence of fossil remains in his quarry, he immediately resorted to the spot. He found that the bore or blast by which these remains were brought to light, had been inserted into the centre of the specimen, so that the mass of stone containing it had been shattered into many pieces, some of which were blown into the adjoining fields. All these pieces he had carefully collected, and proceeding with equal ardour and success to the removal of the matrix from the fossils, he succeeded after a month’s labour in exposing them to view, and in fitting the fragments to their proper places.

This specimen is now in the British Museum.

Many other specimens of detached bones, including vertebræ or parts of the back-bone, especially that part resting on the hind limbs, and called the “pelvis,” bones of the limbs, down to those that supported the claws, together with jaws and teeth, which have since been successively discovered, have enabled anatomists to reconstruct the extinct Iguanodon, and have proved it to have been a herbivorous reptile, of colossal dimensions, analogous to the diminutive Iguana in the form of its teeth, but belonging to a distinct and higher order of reptiles, more akin to the crocodiles. The same rich materials, selecting the largest of the bones as a standard, have served for the present restorations (Nos. 4 and 5) of the animal, as when alive: all the parts being kept in just proportion to the standard bones, and the whole being thus brought to the following dimensions:—